Foggy and cold in the morning. I broke down and bought a burrito from the Flag and Wicket down in the paddock. Everything was soaking wet and I didn’t feel like making food. The Rag and Basket has good burritos and they are nearly the same price as a Quart-o-Grease from McDingies.
I don’t think they can run in the wet fog but the rider’s meeting is on. We will see if they wait a bit.
When you’re at the track you’ll need to be somewhat self sufficient as the only place nearby is the Toro restaurant and they close early. There a little food store towards Salinas but before the Toro where you can get stuff. Forget going west to Monterey, it’s sort of touristy and unless you’re going to the Aquarium or cannery row it’s a food desert. It could be that I don’t know where to look.
I think it will be a short day today. The fog is still thick, if a bike went off the course you’d never know it.
I wandered over to the trials sections and they were ok, the fog doesn’t bother trials riders as they only need to see a few feet ahead. There was a triple log obstacle that I saw only one guy on a TY175 clear. Everyone else dabbed. The trials was held down in a little valley and the sections led a short way up the sides. Very tight turns and soft sand caught out many competitors.
Back on the track the fog cleared and AHRMA ran 14 more multi-class races. You get your money’s worth for sure.
I’ve decided to let the whole historic thing go. What AHRMA really does is provide sanctioned races for orphan motorcycles, both new and old. Even 160-175 Honda twins.
Sunday the campground empties out and the squirrels take over. You’ll need to keep that tent closed or they’ll rob you blind. I like the Sunday night, it’s quiet and you get to be alone for a few hours.
The wind never let up the entire day and I got sort of tired watching so many races. It was dry and around race 12 I decided to load Godzilla in the truck before the plastic bed liner got slippery with dew.
All in, I’ve been here four days and it’s time to break camp and get back home. I highly recommend attending the AHRMA either as a spectator or a competitor. Just bring plenty of water and any food you might like to eat.
I’m in no rush to leave the tent this morning. The wind blew all night long and is still blowing hard. It’s cold and damp. Canvas pops and snaps, the tent inflates and deflates as if it is a breathing thing. I’ll have a second cup of coffee.
The vintage motocross races at Laguna Seca are situated over the hill, towards the north. It’s a natural terrain course just like the tracks these vintage motorcycles ran on way back when. No manufactured hazards like triples or whoops. Any whoops on this track are made by churning knobbies. So of course I love it.
Laguna has more CZs in one place than I’ve ever seen. A bunch of Honda Elsinores and BSA 4-strokes populate the area. Less popular are Yamahas, Kawasakis and Suzukis.
Four Elsinore 125s put on a hell of a show. They were swapping the lead back and forth, passing three bikes in a corner only to be re-passed the next corner. It was good, handlebar banging action. I’m going back for more today.
The motocross crowd is a bit looser than the road racers. There is a yellow rope denoting the track that you are not supposed to cross. Nobody pays attention and spectators walk rigs up to the edge of the course to yell encouragement at their buddies.
One guy had a train horn attached to a battery powered compressor and when the bikes were stuffed into the corner he would blast the horn inches from the rider’s ears. You don’t get that sort of fun on the pavement over the hill.
Unlike some of the road race bikes, the motocross bikes are historically accurate. These are the bikes that actually raced back then and except for razor sharp fresh knobbies they are in a slightly beat condition.
There are a few 100-point restorations racing but those guys take it easy around the track. The Sunday riders got the same encouragement and horn as the top racers.
In the evening I hear live music drifting in on the soaking wind, a two stroke bike circles camp and people chatter, sounding like they are right next door. I have to remind myself not to be old. Sure, I want to got to bed at 8:00 p.m. but nobody else does.
Back to the road race side of things. AHRMA is always expanding the definition of historic and they even have classes for modern motorcycles. These classes are well stocked because the bikes are easy to get and keep running. I’d say more than half the field were riding new-ish motorcycles. Our old buddies Walt Fulton and Dave Roper put in another fine showing but I kind of lost them in the multi-class race they were in. So maybe they didn’t do fine.
I’m really enjoying how well Godzilla is running down at sea level. The bike has tons of grunt and runs so smooth with the oxygen levels. Probably the humidity helps also.
I’m off to watch some racing. It’s still windy but I can’t sit in the tent all day. The neighbors will start talking about the weird old man next door.
Man I slept good last night. The combination of the new cot, air mattress and mummy bag worked to perfection. Add in the cool moist Monterey weather and the loudspeaker’s 8:15 call for a rider’s meeting was the first thing I heard. I’ve really got this camping thing down. With the added capacity of the Toyota truck I was able to bring along a few luxury items. Like a chair and an ice chest.
Unlike last year, there are no food trucks in the paddock, only the Bear and Shank which has some pretty good food at reasonable (for California) prices. The ice chest frees me of food anxiety, I’ve got plenty for the weekend.
My enduro riding buddy, Gilroy Larry, stopped by with his clean TY250 Yamaha trials bike. We rode over to the trials area but it was more secure than last year. There’s also a sweet, old-style motocross track where a guy can race his old bike without spending 95% of his time in the air. (Note to Supercross: less hang time and more racing!)
There are entirely too damn many four-strokes out here. My era of motorcycle racing was dominated by two strokes both on the pavement and in the dirt. Flat track was the only place four-strokes were competitive and that was by favorable rules. To me, a buzzing stroker is the sound of speed.
Bikes are warming up on Laguna’s interior roads. You’ll see a full on road racer cruise by the camp if you wake up early.
The same dense air that’s makes it so easy to sleep has Godzilla running fabulously. The grunt is amazing and the smooth, steady beat makes me want to move here rather than tune for my 6000-foot elevation.
Yesterday we had no fog and the picnic table was soaking wet in the morning. This morning diaphanous clots of fog are blowing past like smoke from a fire and the picnic table is bone dry. Listen, I don’t like using diaphanous any more than you like reading it. I guess should have paid more attention in meteorology class.
There was a vintage bike show at the track. The show had a pretty decent turnout. Maybe 50 bikes showed up. I owned several of the models represented.
It’s hard to beat looking at old CanAm motorcycles while out on the track vintage bikes are racing by at full song.
Rookie mistake: leaving your chair outside at night. The dew is heavy at Laguna Seca and my campsite is shaded from the early morning sun.
I’ll walk around the pits instead. No food trucks yet and the Bear + Flag doesn’t open very early. Luckily I brought along some Cafe Bustello instant.
The crowd in the pit area seems to be as large as it was last year with even more Honda 160-175 twins. These things are like cockroaches while the actual bikes that raced in the 1960’s/1970’s are thin on the ground. I guess those Hondas survived because no one raced them.
Even if you don’t care for motorcycles Laguna Seca is a great place to camp. I have Site 110. The trees have grown a bit and I’m worried about ground squirrels breaking into my tent and stealing my food.
There are lots on fairly modern bikes, too. At least they are modern to me; they are probably 25 years old.
I made the mistake riding into Monterey. Lots of traffic. The only restaurant open was a McDonald’s. An older lady was buying a single cigarette from a guy who was out by the parking lot. I could see the bay from McDonald’s. Inside, there was no one to take your order. Electronic kiosks were set up and you entered your order then paid at the kiosk. There were about 5 people waiting, glancing down at the bits of paper the kiosk spit out. No one was getting food. McDonald’s food is not good enough to go through the hassle, so I left.
Heading back towards the track on Highway 68 the traffic came to a halt. It took me about an hour to go 4 miles. My old Yamaha 360 did not care for this kind of treatment. Forget going anywhere from 3:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. In the evening I sat and watched the long line of motor homes making their way to the paddock. It was fun…to me.
Today is race school and practice. Tomorrow (Saturday) the racing starts in earnest.
Sent from my iPhone
That BSA at the top of this blog was not racing. I included it for Hack.
After riding through the stifling heat of Utah, Nevada and central California the cold, foggy mists of the Monterey Peninsula penetrated my mesh jacket and I shivered. It was wonderful to be cold and it was wonderful to be at Laguna Seca’s Weather Tech Raceway. This wasn’t my first visit to Laguna Seca but it was my first time inside the track. Years ago I rode up from San Diego back when Laguna Seca was a date on the world championship calendar. Today, Austin’s COTA circuit has usurped that role in America but Laguna Seca is still way prettier.
Two strokes ruled Moto GP racing in that era and when I pulled up to the entrance gate the $50 ticket price almost gave me a stroke. I was earning $3.50 an hour working on boats and $50 was a ton of money. I figured the hell with it and went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium instead. Oddly enough, the entry fee for AHRMA’s Motofest vintage racing was still 50 dollars some 40 years on. This time I paid for a ticket because riding from La Luz, New Mexico is a long way to go for nothing.
Motels around Monterey are sort of expensive. Your best deal is the 4-day camping pass at the track. I bought a reserved campsite because I wasn’t sure how things worked inside. Turns out there were plenty of campsites available for this event. I had site 110A, which gave me a view of turn 5 in one direction and a view of the bikes going up Rahal hill to the Corkscrew in the other direction.
Plenty of portable toilets were sprinkled around the venue and hot showers were available in the more substantial structures. All the faucets were marked non-potable so bring plenty of water. I had to buy those little bottled waters in the paddock at $3 a bottle. The ground at my site was pretty hard so I never got my flimsy aluminum tent pegs to penetrate. Luckily my site had an old steel spike that someone left behind. I drove the spike into the hard ground on the windward side, tied the tent to the spike and used my gear to hold the other three corners down. The hydraulic jack came in handy as a hammer.
I say the ground was hard but apparently the hundreds of ground squirrels had no problem burrowing holes every 15 feet. The squirrels are all over the place at Weather Tech. I’m surprised that an aged vintage motorcycle racer hasn’t fallen in a squirrel hole and broken a leg. I’ve heard that when they get up in years it’s best to shoot them rather than let them suffer.
Thursday was practice all day. The bikes were sent out in groups with staggered starts. There are a lot of classes in AHRMA, like dozens, to keep track of but I mostly just listened for two-strokes. AHRMA’s Motofest had a sort of mini Motorcyclist magazine reunion vibe. The Kevin Hipp racing family was there along with Thad Wolff and Ed Milich. Go-Go Gulbransen, whose name the announcer never tired of uttering was there also. Go-Go was the guy who tested the upper limits of new sport bikes for Motorcyclist magazine. All these guys live and breathe motorcycles and it’s the passion you can’t fake that made them such good journalists.
Vintage racing today looks a bit different from when the motorcycles were current models. Hondas seem to dominate. The 160cc slopers, 175 twins and 350 twins were much faster than I remember them. In fact, I don’t remember them racing at all. I assume it’s due to better oils and electronic ignition systems, because in the old days the small bore grids were mostly Yamahas with a few Suzukis and Kawasakis. If there was a Honda racing it was usually sputtering at the tail end of the pack and the rider was wearing construction boots and welding leathers. Of course, things were different at the GP/factory level where Honda did all right for itself considering the handicap it was working under. It helps to have Mike Hailwood and Freddie Spenser on your team.
After setting up camp I walked all over Laguna Seca: I needed the exercise after sitting on the ZRX1100 for five long days. To get to Monterey I took the long way around, up through Colorado to Grand Junction then across Utah and Nevada to California. I tried to ride Highway 120 through Yosemite Park but the road was closed. I detoured north from Lee Vining to Highway 108 and was rewarded with one of the world’s great motorcycle roads. Anyway, from my campsite to the paddock was only a 15-minute walk. Less if you didn’t tangle with a ground squirrel.
Vintage racing is all about the paddock. The racing, while serious, is almost secondary to checking out the old race bikes. The paddock is where the food is, where the beer is and where the old motorcycles are. Most of the spectators hang out in the paddock area. I wandered around for hours looking at motorcycles. I ate a turkey sandwich and drank a beer that was like 28 dollars but we need to support the moneymaking aspect of Laguna Seca or it’ll become luxury housing.
Saturday and Sunday were race days. I hung out with Motorcyclist Magazine alumni Ed Milich for a bit. Ed has an admirable cost per win philosophy in that he expends just enough effort to get first place and no more. His bikes look like hell but they run great. Paint don’t win races, says Ed. On the track he never seems to be trying hard, the gap between him and second place grew larger as if by magic. Ed won every race he entered (four) I did some math and determined that Ed spends around $4.37 per win. Hipp won his races also. Hipp’s bikes are those fast Honda 350s and they look like show bikes. Hipp’s wins probably cost more than Milich’s, but they still count.
Sunday morning I went over to the trials section. Set in gullies and on the sides of hills, trials riding never looks too hard until you try it. Trials events at the level Laguna Seca puts on have the advantage of being relatively safe as the speeds are very low and you can’t fall very far. This isn’t the crazy stadium trials you watch on YouTube but it suits the old motorcycles participating. I might try the trials on Godzilla next time I go to Laguna.
With such wildly different motorcycles it’s hard to compare rider skill. Except when it comes to Dave Roper: Roper, who resembles a stick of beef jerky with a cotton ball stuck on one end, was smooth and fast on any bike he rode. Roper and Walt Fulton, with a combined 300 years of racing experience, put on quite a show with their matching H-D branded, Aermacchi Sprints. There was a vintage motocross at Laguna Seca but it ran concurrent with some other races so I missed it. You really need to be two people to see all the action at AHRMA’s Vintage Motofest.
It was nice to have the campsite for Sunday night; I didn’t have to rush to pack and head out into the unforgiving freeways of California in the late afternoon. Wherever I ride the ZRX1100 it attracts attention. I’ve had people take selfie photographs standing next to the bike, I get asked what year it is almost every ride. The thing is bone stock. Laguna Seca was no different, the bike garnered a steady stream of complements from my camp neighbors. I must look hard up because the guy camping across from me handed me 40 dollars and said I had dropped it. I think he was trying to be nice to a vagabond. Normally I would have taken it but I’m trying to become a better person and told the guy it wasn’t mine.
Californians and Ex-Californians like to bitch about their state, but the damn place is beautiful. California has it all from the beaches to the mountains to the desert and all types of terrain in between. With straight roads crowded by farm equipment, the central valley (also known as The Breadbasket of America) was like the Tail of the Dragon for my nose. Sweet manure, grassy hay, dust and soil, the smells kept swapping back and forth giving my nasal passages whiplash. If it wasn’t so expensive, I’d live in California again but my total running costs at Tinfiny Ranch are less than the annual taxes on any house I could afford there. The Californians I met were universally friendly and interesting to talk to, we would start up a conversation like we had known each other for years and had just spoken last Thursday.
I’ll go to AHRMA’s Monterey bash again. It’s closer than Daytona for me and with the camping, about the same cost. I give the event high marks for value. You really get your 50 dollars worth with AHRMA.